напишите развернутую аннотацию к тексту, About 16.000 viruses have been encountered by various antivirus research labs, and that number is expected to continue growing rapidly. Though it is difficult to predict what the next major class of viruses will be or when it will hit, the place it hits is likely to be the Internet. Viruses are spread due to human contacts, such as exchanging disks or posting an infected file on a server. But they move from system to system also by themselves actively seeking out new computers to infect. IBM researchers have proposed an automated system that can identify new viruses as well as develop and disseminate the antidotes. The software will be able to identify a previously unknown virus by either analyzing changes to a file or studying the characteristics of a file for code common to viruses. When a potential virus is identified, the infected file will be sent to the virus-lab computer. If the virus is known but not recognized by the user's system because of out-of-date software, updated antivirus data will be sent back to the user. If the virus is truly unknown, the virus-lab computers will let it spread within a secure environment and then study the way the virus behaves, extracting its signature based on the common characteristics of the infected files. The signature will be tested to ensure it didn't misidentify clean files as infected. If the signature passes, it would be sent back to the machine on which the virus was originally identified and the virus will be removed. IBM estimates that the entire process should take only about 3 minutes. Within a day, the updated virus signature will be sent out to all computers running IBM's software, protecting them from possible infection. This automated system will be faster than the manual process used in today's antivirus software, which typically takes several weeks to a few months to send new virus signatures to all subscribers. Other disaster faces the antivirus community in the coming years. As computer prices continue to drop and more users get connected, the general level of user sophistication goes down. As a result, hoaxes have begun to spread around the Internet like wildfire. They are so prevalent that most users are more likely to be bothered by hoaxes than by actual viruses. A hoax typically takes the form of an e-mail message: it warns the user of a virus spreading as part of another e-mail message that will cause damage to the user's computer. The message urges users to send the warning to all their colleagues. In fact there is no virus, but the hoaxer's message can take on viruslike characteristics as it replicates from system to system via e-mail. Although it is possible for a virus to spread via e-mail, such a virus has yet to be seen and studied. Most users do not understand the difference between viruses and other malicious threats. Because of this, anti-virus vendors will have to continue extending their products to address more types of security problems, as well as to better detect the rapidly increasing number of viruses.